Disobedience

by Naomi Alderman

What is the shape of time? On occasion, we may feel that time is circular. The seasons approach and retreat, the same every year. Night follows day follows night follows day. The festivals arrive in their time, cycling one after the other. And each month, the womb and the moon together grow fat and fertile, then bleed away, and begin to grow once more. It may seem that time leads us on a circling path, returning us to where we began. In other moods, we may view time as a straight and infinite line, dizzying in its endlessness. We travel from birth to death, from past to future, and each second that ticks by is gone forever. We talk of managing time, but time manages us, hurrying us along where we might have wished to linger. We can no more halt time than the moon can halt her nightly journey across the sky. As is so often the case, these two seemingly irreconcilable observations combine to form the truth. Time is spiral. Our journey through time may be compared to an ascent around the outside of a round tower. We travel, it is true, and can never return to the places we have left. However, as each revolution brings us higher and farther, it also brings us around to encounter the same vistas we have seen before. Every Shabbat is different from the Shabbat before; nonetheless every Shabbat is Shabbat. Each day brings evening and morning, yet no day will ever be repeated. The moon, waxing and waning in accordance with the wishes of her Creator, is our example: always changing...